Windows7 Firewall turn off doesn't mean turn off

So, two days ago I installed Guild Wars 2 and intended to play. I had some issues with accessing internet so I did some regular port forwarding in router (80, 443, 6112, 6600) and turned off windows firewall.

After a couple of hours of trying to figure out what's wrong it turns out that by deactivating windows firewall, NO new applications can access internet. So when you turn off windows firewall, the only that thing that REALLY happens is that you turn off queries for allowing applications to access internet that previously hasn't been marked as safe. That's a new functionality of "turn off" that I previously wasn't aware of.

Oh Microsoft, why, why, why?